"A dire situation caused by a massive nominee logjam on Capitol Hill.”
This is how CNN describes the state of judicial nominations in a new report that documents the “crisis” on our federal courts through interviews with a number of judges and experts, and clips from White House Counsel Robert Bauer’s rare public remarks at an ACS event.
“This is as bad as I’ve seen it,” said U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Royce Lamberth.
“You’ve got judges handling eight times the number of criminal cases that are normally registered in other courts across the nation. That’s a staggering docket,” said U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas W. Royal Furgeson Jr., who explained that the burden in border states handling large immigration and drug dockets is overwhelming.
Ferguson said judges are forced to come up with shortcuts, like sentencing defendants assembly-line style.
“That’s unacceptable,” he said. “But if you don’t do that, if you take the normal time it would take to sentence people, your cases just back up to the point where it’s impossible to deal with them. The courts just get completely gridlocked and logjammed.”
Citing Robert Bauer’s remarks during an ACS event on judicial nominations that received widespread attention, CNN explained that what is particularly troubling is the “lack of urgency.”
“Republicans as well as Democrats increasingly acknowledge, some privately, some publicly, that we are witnessing something profoundly troubling,” Bauer said.
There are now 94 vacant federal court seats subject to Senate confirmation, 37 of which are considered judicial emergencies. Visit JudicialNominations.org to learn more about the judicial vacancy crisis and follow developments.
See the full CNN report, which includes a video report, accompanying article, and several video interviews, here. Watch Bauer’s full remarks followed by a panel discussion on judicial nominations here.
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